I had the privilege to work with a beauty queen from the Philippines and founder of tameraonline.com, the Philippines’ first online cosmetics store, Ms. Tamera Marie Szijarto. She was a Ms. Earth 2004 Beauty Pageant candidate where she became the first Philippine representative to make it as one of the top 8 finalists.

For my lighting setup, I used 1 medium softbox directly over the model’s head, with the lower side of the softbox almost touching my lens and two strip lights on each side. To soften the shadows below her nose and the chin, I put a white reflector just below the model’s chest. And finally, I used one light directly behind the model facing the background to give that little glow effect on the image. I shot tethered into my mac using Lightroom so we could review the images immediately. I couldn’t emphasize enough the significance of shooting tethered when possible because it gives you the opportunity to fine tune the lighting and do the necessary adjustments in no time, check for focus, etc. You should remember that you cannot always trust that little LCD behind your camera. My experience with my 5D Mark II is that my LCD is always a third of a stop underexposed, so if I would just try to compensate using what I can see from the small LCD screen, my images would probably be blown out in some areas.

Here were some of the images she have chosen:

Special thanks to Atty. Leif Opina, Councilor of the Municipality of Cabuyao.